Comment on “Get Your Internet Domains Now” in Forbes.com.

Wow SuccessClick. I never knew the power of generic domain names. How foolish Ebay, Google, and Amazon was. Of course, they followed the path blazed by the foolish Xerox, Kodak, and Apple. I’m sure the owners of cottagecheese.com, milk.com, and watch.com are raking it in.

Generic dictionary domain names are modern-day tulip bulbs whose only value results from hyping pitchmen such as yourself. How in the world is watch.com working for the domain owner every day. Has a given portfolio of 40 dictionary domains or LLLL.com domains increased in value consistently year-after-year? For example, does Torino Pasta gain measurable benefits from owning pasta.com and biscotti.com?

Your pitch – that a generic domain can rule the web – only makes sense if consumers are idiots and have no idea how to use a search engine. Do you reasonably expect that the average user will type in “doctors.com” instead of “webmd?” In fact, I imagine that the typical user knows that generic domains usually lead to worthless parking parking pages.

As for sound investments – generic domain names in and of themselves by definition do not have trademark or other intellectual property protection. And the question of whether domains are even property is still in question. Domain names are government by a confusing and sometimes contradictory set of rules – and ruled over by a non-profit corporation, not a government entity.

In the recent Commonwealth v. 141 Internet Domain Names, Case No. 08-CI-1409 (Ky Cir. Ct., Oct. 16, 2008), it was argued by a group including Network Solutions and the industry trade group ICA that:

“The Opposing Groups and Lawyers … collectively assert that domain names are akin to a telephone number or a business or residential address only; that domain names are but a combination of letters and numbers, which serves as a mnemonic aid, nothing more. They argue that domains are not property, but are rights in a service contract.”

Domain names. Tulip bulbs.

[in response to another article comment that said, in part, “A domain name is an appreciable marketing asset. It grows in value. It works for you day after day. It doesn’t stop working after a few weeks, like an expensive ad campaign will do using traditional advertising methods.” posted by Stephen Douglas of successclick.com]

From: http://ping.fm/qwrBg

The main thing is that those old domains did not create problems for you: “second hand” domains might have had negative reputation with Google (they might have been part of the network, involved in illegitimate or spammy techniques, etc). Thus you may find hard time getting the site indexed or by linking from it now blacklist your other site.

From: http://ping.fm/dEBMK

A team including former Google employees has launched a beta service that aims to allow businesses to monitor and protect against reputation damage caused by online malware compromises.

From: http://ping.fm/VXOyQ

Trust but verify!!! Good advice:

How to protect your identity and personal information online

The Adsense for Domains test has expired.  It is no more.  It has ceased to be.  I have stopped watering the dead houseplant under the ex-parrot.

After a month (and a few days) of my Adsense for Domains test, I am thoroughly underwhelmed.  I did cover the cost of a latte, so perhaps I shouldn’t complain.  The larger issue, of course, is that I have collected no data at all on traffic patterns and drivers that could give me insight on how to best develop these domains.  I could have parked these at one of the domain parking services with a lot less effort – or even thrown a one-page content site up and collect real data.

Final tally posted here.

While most domains brought in traffic – and fairly steady traffic during the test -  only three brought revenue.  Certainly not worth the two hours it took configuring the DNS.  Over the next month I will start moving these over to content sites and start developing them.  Unless anyone wants to buy them (wink wink nudge nudge).  As for parking – I’m moving on

There is no charge for awesomeness (Po, Kung Fu Panda);

Home with a sick child, watching Kung Fu Pand, eating ice cream, and occasionaly checking email. Just got this:

Phillip –
Regardless of how the rest of your day goes, here’s something to be happy about — today a honey pot you installed successfully identified a previously unknown email harvester (IP: 86.20.21.215). The harvester was caught by your honey pot installed at:

www.vtoolbox.com

You can find information about your newly identified harvester here:

http://www.projecthoneypot.org/ip_86.20.21.215

Don’t forget to tell your friends you made the Internet a little better today. You can refer them to Project Honey Pot directly from our website:

http://www.projecthoneypot.org/refer_a_friend.php

So hey – pop on over and see what you can do to take a byte out of mime..

The one-week results for my Adsense for Domains test is up – I’ve dumped the full results into a Google spreadsheet for those interested.  Summary is on the test report pageI have yet to make a buck.  I never really considered using domain parking before – I think I may be a few hundred domains shy of the number needed.

See the test report here. I will continue to update this on a regular basis -does anyone else have different or better results?  Let me know!.

While I’ve thought about using some form of cash parking for domains I’ve acquired and never really developed, its always seemed to be more trouble than it was worth. But with a tight economy, launching my own business, and a bit of curiosity, I spent this afternoon looking into it.

There is a lot of discussion on Google’s motivation. No one seems to be reporting on their use/success, so I thought I would keep a running review of how a small number of my domains did. I’m not a typosquatter, but I do have a small bunch of certification-related domains I picked up for a now-dormant project.

It took about an hour to modify all the DNS settings – and now I will update the test results for at least the next couple of months on a dedicated page.

About 10 years ago, I was in Chicago to deliver a Vignette StoryServer training class. It was cold. And I was standing in line, outside, waiting to get a bag of Garrett cheese popcorn.  The guy in front of me turned back a few times, then introduced himself.  He was with the Trib and had recognized me.  We spent a cold walk to the L talking about the impact of the web, the news, and the future.

I never got his name.  And time proved most of our speculations (and stock options) worthless.  But I do remember the impact that the Chicago Tribune’s web operations had on my own career.  They were Vignette’s first marquee customer for the old StoryServer product (which had its detractors).  Acquired from CNET – where it was called PRISM – it ran on Sun and was powered by Tcl and Sybase (or Oracle if you REALLY wanted to IPO well).  And after a time I actually managed a pale imitation of MVC using it.  While I had some exposure to data bases prior to coming to Vignette, I spent many a long night in 1997 with the Trib schema on the screen and “Database Design For Mere Mortals” on my desk.  By the time I was back getting popcorn in the winter of  ‘98 I was able to give the Trib guy an idea or two from our first forays into XML services.   I will always be grateful to those Trib folks that answered my first dumb questions and helped convince me to leave Detroit for Austin.

Several bubble-bursts later, I hate to see the Tribune  fall, although it looks like it was financial engineering, not the technical or business models.  I hope 2009 is kinder to us all.